Heaven

  "Say it."

  "I'm sorry . . . Mother."

  "An what else?"

  "You will tell me what you know about Keith and Our Jane?"

  "Say it."

  "I'm sorry I said so many ugly things . . . Mother." "Sayin sorry ain't enough."

  "What else can I say?"

  "Ain't nothin ya kin say. Not now. I seen ya doin it. I heard what ya said t'me. Called me a fake. Called me a hill scumbag. Knew ya'd turn against me soona or lata, t'minute I had my back turned ya'd do somethin nasty. Had t'lay on yer side, wiggle round an round, an pleasure yerself, didn't ya? Then ya had eta me off . . . an now I gotta do what I kin t'rid ya of evil."

  "And then you'll tell me where Keith and Our Jane are?"

  "When I finish. When yer saved. Then . . . maybe."

  "Mother . . . why are you lighting the match? The lights have come back on. We don't need candles before it's really dark."

  "Go get t'doll."

  "Why?" I cried, desperate now.

  "Don't ask why--jus do as I say."

  "You'll tell me what you know about Keith and Our Jane?"

  "Tell ya everythin. Everythin I know."

  She had one of the long matches lit now. "Fore it burns my fingas, fetch t'doll."

  I ran, crying as I fell to my knees and reached under the bed and dragged out the doll that

  represented my dead mother, my young mother whose face I'd inherited. "I'm sorry, Mother," I cried, lavishing her hard face with kisses, and then I ran again. Two steps from the bottom I tripped and fell. I got up to limp as fast as I could toward Kitty, the pain in my ankle so terrible I felt like screaming.

  Kitty stood near the living-room fireplace. "Put her in there," she ordered coldly, pointing to the andirons that held the iron grate. Logs were stacked there, kindling laid by Cal just for looks, for Kitty didn't like wood smoke dirtying and "stinkin up" her clean house.

  "Please don't burn her, Ki--Mother. . . ."

  "T'late t'make up fer t'harm ya done."

  "Please, Mother. I'm sorry. Don't hurt the doll. I don't have a photograph of my mother. I've never seen her. This is all I have."

  "Liar!"

  "Mother she couldn't help what my pa did.

  She's dead--you're still alive. You won in the end. You married Cal, and he's ten times the man my father is, or ever could be."

  "Put that nasty thin in there!" she commanded.

  I stepped backward, causing her to step threateningly forward. "If ya eva wanna know where Keith an Our Jane is . . . ya have t'give that hateful doll t'me of yer own free will. Don't ya make me snatch it from ya--or ya'll neva find yer lil brotha an sista."

  My own free will.

  For Keith.

  For Our Jane.

  I handed her the doll.

  I watched Kitty toss my beloved bride doll onto the grate. Tears streaked my face as I fell to my knees and bowed my head and said a silent prayer . . . as if my mother herself lay on her funeral pyre.

  With horror I watched the fine lace dress with pearls and crystal beads burst into instant flame, the silvery-gold hair catching fire; the wonderfully alivelooking skin seemed to melt; two small licks of flames consumed the long, dark curling lashes.

  "Now ya listen, scumbag," said Kitty when it was over, and my irreplaceable portrait doll lay in ashes. "Don't ya go tellin Cal what I did. Ya smile, ya act happy when my guests show up. STOP that cryin! It were only a doll! Only a doll!"

  But that heap of ashes in the fireplace represented my mother, my claim to the future that should have been hers. How could I prove who I was, how, how?

  Unable to refrain, I reached into the hot ashes and plucked from them a crystal bead that had rolled free from the hearth. It sparkled in my palm like a teardrop. My mother's tear. "Oh, I hate you, Kitty, for doing this!" I sobbed. "It wasn't necessary! I hate you so much I wish it had been YOU in the fire!"

  She struck! Hard, brutally, over and over again until I was on the floor, and still she was slapping my face, slamming her fists into my stomach . . . and I blacked out.

  Mercifully blacked out.

  sixteen MY SAVIOR, MY FATHER

  . SHORTLY AFTER THE PARTY WAS OVER AND ALL KITTY'S friends were gone, Cal found me lying facedown on the floor in the room where I slept; no longer could I think of it as my room. He stood in the doorway silhouetted by the hall light behind him. I felt too sore and raw to move. My beautiful new dress was torn and dirty. And even though he was there I continued to lie in a crumpled heap and cry. It seemed I was always crying for what I'd had once and lost. My pride, my brothers and sisters, my mother--and her doll.

  "What's wrong?" Cal asked, stepping into the room and falling down on his knees beside me. "Where have you been? What's the matter?"

  I cried on and on.

  "Heaven darling, you've got to tell me! I tried to slip away from the party earlier, but Kitty clung to my arm like a burr. She kept saying you didn't feel well, that you were having cramps. Why are you on the floor? Where were you during the party?" He turned me over gently and gazed lovingly into my swollen and discolored face before he stared at my torn dress and nylons full of runs. An expression of such rage flashed through his eyes it frightened me. "Oh, my God," he cried out, clenching his fists. "I should have known! She's hurt you again, and I didn't save you from her! And that's why she treated me so

  possessively tonight! Tell me what happened," he demanded again, reaching to cradle me in his arms.

  "Go way," I sobbed. "Leave me alone. It's going to be all right. I'm not really hurt . . ."

  I sought for the right words to soothe his anxiety and my own misery, which by this time I was thinking I'd brought on myself. Maybe I was hillscum filth, and did deserve everything Kitty had done. My own fault. Pa couldn't love me. If your own father couldn't love you, who could? Nobody could love me. I was lost, all alone . . . and never would anybody love me, never love me enough.

  "No, I won't go away." He lightly touched my hair, his lips traveling all over my sore, puffy face. Perhaps he thought it was that way only from crying, not from a battering. There were no lights on for him to see well. Did he think his small kisses could ease the pain? Yet they did, a little. "Does it hurt that much?" he asked with pity in his voice. He looked so sad, so loving.

  His fingertips on my swollen eye were so tender. "You look so beautiful lying here in my arms, with the moonlight on your face. You seem half a child, half a woman, older than sixteen, but still so young, so vulnerable and untouched."

  "Cal . . . do you still love her?"

  "Who?"

  "Kitty."

  He seemed dazed. "Kitty? I don't want to talk about Kitty. I want to talk about you. About me."

  "Where's Kitty?"

  "Her girlfriends," he began in a mocking, sarcastic voice, "decided that Kitty really needed a special gift." He paused and smiled ironically. "They've all gone to watch male strippers, and I was left here to sit with you."

  "As if I'm a baby . . . ?"

  I stared at him with tears wetting my face. His smile grew tighter, more cynical. "I'd rather be right where I am, with you, than any other place in the world. Tonight, with all those other people, drinking and eating, laughing over silly jokes, I realized something for the first time. I felt all alone because you weren't there." His voice deepened. "You came into my life, and truthfully I didn't want you. I didn't want to take on the role of a father, even if Kitty did feel she had to be a mother. But now I'm so damned scared Kitty will hurt you in some horrible way. I've tried to be here as much as possible. And yet I haven't saved you from anything. Tell me what she did today."

  I could tell him. I could make him hate her. But I was scared, not only of Kitty but of him, a grown man who appeared at this very minute totally infatuated with a kid of seventeen. Limply I lay in his arms, completely exhausted, listening to his heart pound.

  "Heaven, she slapped you, didn't she? She saw you wearing an expensive new dress and tried to tear it off, didn't she
?" he asked in a voice thick with emotion. Deep in my own thoughts I didn't even notice that he'd raised my hand to press it against his heart. Beneath his shirt I could feel the steady heartbeats, thumping, making it seem I was already part of him. I wanted to speak and tell him I was almost his daughter, and he shouldn't be looking at me the way he was. But no one had ever looked at me with love before--love I had needed for so long. Why was it making me afraid of him?

  He both comforted me and frightened me, made me feel good and made me feel guilty. I owed him so much, perhaps too much, and I didn't know what to do. A funny glazed look came into his eyes, as if I had unknowingly pushed some switch, perhaps because I lay so submissively in his embrace. Much to my surprise, his lips were making a trail all around my throat, savoring the taste and feel of my flesh. I shivered again, wanting to tell him to stop, afraid if I did he wouldn't love me. If I drove him away I wouldn't have anyone to protect me from Kitty, or to care any longer what happened to me . . . and so I didn't say stop.

  I had journeyed away from tears into unknown territory, where I lay trapped, not knowing what to do, or what to feel . . . It wasn't wrong, was it, this sweet tenderness he showed when he brushed his lips over mine, gently touching me as if afraid he'd frighten me with too bold an approach--and then I saw his face.

  He was crying! "I wish you weren't just a beautiful child. I wish you were older."

  Those tears glistening in his eyes filled my heart with pity for him. He was as trapped as I was, in debt to Kitty up to his hairline; he couldn't just walk out on all the effort and years of learning electronics. I couldn't pull away and slap his face when he'd given me the only kindness I'd ever had from a man, and saved me from a life that could have been so much worse here in Candlewick.

  Still, I whispered, "N0000," but it didn't stop him from kissing where he wanted to kiss, or fondling where he wanted to fondle. I quivered all over, as if God above were looking down and condemning me to eternal hell, as Reverend Wise had said he would, and where Kitty reminded me every day that I was sure to go. It surprised me that he would want to nuzzle his face against my breasts while his tears poured like hot rain and he sobbed in my arms.

  What had I done or said to make him think what he had to be thinking? Guilt and shame washed over me.

  Was I truly innately wicked, as Kitty was always saying? Why had I brought this on myself?

  I wanted to cry out and tell him what Kitty had done, burned my mother's doll--but perhaps he'd think that a trivial, silly sorrow, to see a doll burned. And what were a few slaps when I'd endured so much more?

  Save me, save me! I wanted to scream.

  Don't do anything else to take away my pride, please, please! My body betrayed me. It felt good, what he was doing. It felt good to be held, rocked, cuddled, and caressed. A precious thing he made me feel one second, an evil, wicked thing the next. All my life long I'd been starved for hands that touched kindly, lovingly. All my life yearning for a father to love me.

  "I love you," he whispered, kissing my lips again, and I didn't ask how he loved me, as a daughter or as something more. I didn't want to know. Not now, when for the first time in my life I felt valuable, worthy enough for a fine man like him to love and desire . . . even if something deep within me was alarmed.

  "How sweet and soft you are," he murmured when he kissed my bared breasts.

  I closed my eyes, tried to not think about what I was allowing him to do. Now he'd never leave me alone with Kitty. Now he'd find ways to keep me forever safe, and force Kitty to tell him where Keith and Our Jane were.

  Thank God caressing my thighs and abdomen and buttocks under my torn dress seemed to satisfy him enough. Perhaps because I began to talk, to make him remember who I was. In a burst of words I gushed it all out, about the doll, the burning, how Kitty had forced me by saying she knew where Keith and Our Jane were. "Do you really think she does know?" I asked.

  "I don't know what she knows," he said shortly, bitterly, coming back to himself as the dazed look in his eyes went away. "I don't know if she knows anything but how to be cruel."

  He met my wide, frightened eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be doing this. Forgive me for forgetting who you are, Heaven."

  I nodded, my heart pounding as I watched him take from his shirt pocket a tiny box wrapped in silver and tied with blue satin ribbon. He put it in my hand. "I have a gift to congratulate you for being such a good student, and making me so proud of you, Heaven Leigh Casteel." He opened the box and lifted the lid on the smaller black velvet box inside, which revealed a dainty gold watch. His eyes met mine, pleadingly. "I know you're living for the day when you can escape this house, and Kitty, and me. So I give you a calendar watch, to count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until you can find your brother and little sister. And I swear I'll do all I can to find out what Kitty knows. Please don't run from me."

  Truth was in his eyes. Love for me was there as well. I stared and stared, until finally I had to accept, and I held out my arm and allowed him to fasten the watch about my wrist. "Naturally," he said bitterly, "you can't let Kitty see this watch."

  He leaned to kiss my forehead tenderly, cupping my face between his palms before he said, "Forgive me for trespassing where I should never go. Sometimes I need someone so badly, and you're so sweet, so young and understanding, and as starved for affection as I am."

  He didn't notice that I'd sprained my ankle, since I took great pains to see that I didn't walk until he had left the room and my bedroom door was closed. I couldn't fall asleep. Cal was so close, dangerously close, and we were alone in the house. He was in the other room, a few feet away. Right through the walls I could almost sense his need for me, and my terrible fear that need would override his sense of decency made me get up, pull a robe over my nightgown, and painfully make my way down the stairs and into the living room, where I lay on the white sofa and waited for Kitty to come home.

  All night long the rain was a steady drumming, slashing against the windowpanes, pelting the roof, rolling thunder and far-off flashes, keeping me always on edge. However, I had a purpose in mind. I meant to confront Kitty, and this time come out the winner. Somehow or other I had to force her to tell me where Keith and Our Jane were. I clutched in my hand a tiny crystal bead with a few threads of charred white lace I'd found in the fireplace. Yet as I sat there on her sofa, in her spanking-clean white house, with her rainbowed creatures all around me, I felt

  outnumbered, overwhelmed. I fell into sleep and missed Kitty's stumbling steps when she came home dead drunk.

  Her loud voice coming from the bedroom woke me up.

  "Done had me a good time!" Kitty bellowed. "Best damned party eva! Gonna do it every year from now on--an ya kin't stop me!"

  "You may do as you damn well please," answered Cal as I drifted nearer and nearer the stairs. "I don't care anymore what you do, or what you say."

  "Then yer leavin me . . . are ya, are ya?"

  "Yes, Kitty. I am leaving you," he said, to my surprise and joy.

  "Ya kin't, ya know. Yer stuck wid me. Once ya go ya ain't got nothin. I'll take yer shop, an all these years ya done been married up t'me go down t'drain, an yer penniless agin . . unless ya go home to Mommy an Daddy an tell em what a damn fool ya are."

  "You do have a sweet and convincing way with words, Kitty."

  "I love ya. Ain't that all that counts?" Kitty said, her voice sounding suddenly vulnerable.

  I stared upward, wondering what was

  happening. Was he stripping off her clothes, full of desire just because this time she was going to let him?

  When I heard Cal in the downstairs bath the next morning, I got up and started breakfast. Cal was whistling in the shower. Was he happy now?

  Kitty came from upstairs apparently a changed woman, smiling at me as if she hadn't burned my most beloved possession and punched me in the face. "Why, honey baby," she crooned, "why'd ya stay upstairs durin t'party ya gave me, huh, why did ya? Missed ya, I did. Wanted ya there t'show
ya off Call my friends. Why, all t'girls were dyin t'see ya, an ya were shy an didn't show up an let em see my pretty daughta gets betta-lookin every day. Really, honey doll, ya do gotta get used t'monthly cramps, an ferget all about em--or else yer neva gonna enjoy bein a woman."

  "You tell me where Keith and Our Jane are!" I shouted. "You promised to tell me!"

  "Why, honey, what ya talkin bout? How would / know?" She smiled, so help me, she smiled as if she'd completely forgotten all she'd done. Was she pretending? Oh, she had to be! She wasn't that crazy! Then came the more dreadful thought--maybe she really was insane!

  Cal strode in and threw Kitty a look of disgust, though he didn't say anything. Behind her back his eyes met mine, sending me a silent warning. Do nothing. Say nothing. Let Kitty play her pretend game, and we'd play ours. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. How could I live through day after day of this? My eyes lowered to watch the eggs sizzling in the pan.

  It was May now, and the hustle and bustle of preparing for exams was in the air. I studied hours on end so I'd earn good grades. Very late in the month, a weird kind of northeaster blew in and chased away spring warmth, and suddenly it was unseasonably cold. Furnaces that had been shut down in March were started up again. Sweaters put in mothballs came out with woolen skirts. On the coldest Friday in May I'd ever known, I stayed late for a conference with Mr. Taylor, my biology teacher. He asked me if I'd please take our class hamster, Chuckles, home for the weekend.

  The dilemma I faced showed up clearly in my troubled expression as I stood by the hamster's large wire cage, wanting to shout out the truth about Kitty and her diabolical hatred of all living animals, when under any other circumstances I would have been delighted to be in charge of the pregnant hamster that was the biology-class pet.

  "Oh, no," I said quickly when he persisted. "I've told you. Mr. Taylor, my mother doesn't approve of pets in her house. They're messy, smelly, and she's always sniffing the air for odors she doesn't

  recognize."

  "Oh, come now, Heaven," said Mr. Taylor, "you're exaggerating, I know you are. Your mother is a lovely, gracious woman, I can tell from the way she smiles at you."